


Lullaby of the Isles

by Smiling_Seshat



Series: Witcher works [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dimension Travel, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Monster Girl Being Hunted Down By Geralt, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Rescue Missions, Self-Insert, Sirens, The Skellige Isles (The Witcher), Transformation, Transmigration, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:06:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21879331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smiling_Seshat/pseuds/Smiling_Seshat
Summary: Featuring a modern person finding herself in the Witcher universe. She appears on an island in Skellige and has to adapt for the sake of survival.
Series: Witcher works [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1649437
Comments: 189
Kudos: 414





	1. Chapter 1

Spikeroog was a larger island than Lorelei had expected. Of course, when she’d played the game she hadn’t thought of it much, but it made sense, didn’t it? The Skellige Isles were meant to be a country, or more accurately, a group of islands forming a nation. A video game wouldn’t be able to have an open world the size of a country, except perhaps if that country was as large as Liechtenstein.  
  
So the map Lorelei was used to wasn’t completely accurate anymore. The real version was much larger, with everything double or triple the size. The village of Svorlag was bigger than expected, with large flocks of sheep being shepherded in surrounding plains.  
  
Lorelei hadn’t entered the village, knowing better than to allow anyone to see her. She’d approached in order to verify that the settlement was there, and then she’d left.  
  
So she wasn’t hallucinating. Probably.  
  
Believing you’d somehow ended up in a fictional world was harder than telling yourself you’d cracked from stress and were hallucinating the whole thing.  
  
The moment she had realized where she was, the first thing she’d done was look for familiar landmarks. She’d found Svorlag, and from there she’d finally been able to accept her situation.  
  
Somewhat.  
  
Fanfiction characters made this look _so_ much easier.  
  
Couldn’t she have ended up in Toussaint? She spoke French, and she was a wine enthusiast! That place would have been perfect! Hell, she’d rather be stuck as a poor peasant in Velen than being stranded on Skellige. Skellige was full of rapists and slavers. Ohh, the game didn’t shove it in your face, but it made it pretty clear that women like Madman Lugos’ wife were people that had been kidnapped from ships the islanders had raided and forced into life-long sexual servitude.  
  
Sure, other places weren’t great — Velen and White Orchard were war-torn and infested with necrophages, while Novigrad was busy with religious fanatics burning people to death. But Skellige had never been Lorelei’s favourite destination when playing the game. It had some great characters and quests, but she hadn’t liked the environment itself.  
  
And now, being in Skellige and seeing it with her own eyes, she only felt more justified in her dislike.  
  
She’d been forced to subsist off raw fish, unable to find any other way to feed herself. Her vegetarian ideals had been thrown away very quickly in favour of survival.  
  
Finding shelter had been worse. She couldn’t remember the locations of any of the bandit camps or any other minor places to avoid, having never thought it would be a useful thing to memorize, and she’d been extremely cautious while moving around, afraid she might be attacked by bandits or by some of the nearby wolf packs.  
  
She hadn’t been stupid enough to allow anyone to see her, naturally, and had kept away from villages. More importantly, she’d stayed well away from Melusine’s cave out of a desire to keep her head intact.  
  
The entire island was a death trap, but some places presented larger risks than others.  
  
Lorelei sighed.  
  
She was sitting on a ovoid megalith—or, as most people knew them as, a Place of Power. She’d tried drawing magic from it when she’d arrived yesterday, but nothing had happened. Either she’d done something wrong, or only witchers could draw strength from Places of Power.  
  
“Stupid rain…” she grumbled.  
  
She was completely drenched. No matter the risk of catching a cold, she was still hesitant to seek shelter. And for good reason: Last night she’d given in and slept in Udalryk’s abandoned longhouse. It had walls and a roof and protected Lorelei against the biting cold of the outdoors, but the constant dripping sound of the omnipresent tar-like substance in the building made her extremely uncomfortable. This building was where a demon would appear at one point.  
  
Right now the monster was still busy driving Udalryk down the path of insanity with a cheerful case of possession, but at some point the creature would show up in the longhouse and Lorelei needed to be long gone by then.  
  
The sun had set mere moments ago, and the rain was still going strong. She needed to find shelter.  
  
Lorelei looked at the longhouse, a bit further down the mountain, and grimaced. The place was deeply unsettling, but it wasn’t like she had anywhere else to go.  
  
“Time to go,” she told herself.  
  
She didn’t use to talk to herself. Back home, she had friends and family. Plenty of people to chat with. Her tendency to talk out loud was new. That was one of the numerous things about her that had changed after being stuck in Skellige for a few days.  
  
Lorelei straightened up and leapt off the large stone she’d been sitting on. Her wings spread and then she was gliding through the air, descending gently towards the longhouse. She landed jerkily on the roof, still unused to her new appendages, and managed to crawl into the building via a hole in the roof.  
  
She laid down on a thick wooden beam near the ceiling, where she’d hopefully remain unseen if anyone were to enter the abandoned building and not think to look up. Trying to ignore the sound of unidentifiable liquid dripping on the floor, she prepared herself for another night of uneasy sleep.

-x-x-x-

Lorelei awoke to find that her fears had come true.  
  
The house had noticeably darkened, filled with black fog and muffled screeching noises. The hym — the devil haunting the house — was angry.  
  
Lorelei had spent two days squatting the house, and the hym had never showed itself, not caring about her much. She wasn’t sure if it was because she wasn’t doing anything, or because her body wasn’t human and so the hym believed her to be, if not on its side, at the very least neutral and uninterested in causing trouble.  
  
But someone had shown up very intent on causing trouble.  
  
It was Cerys.  
  
A beautiful young woman and, depending on what route you took in the game, the future ruler of Skellige. Her jaw was rather square, uncommon in a game where every woman seemed to have an oval-shaped face or, more rarely, a rounded one. Cerys had beautiful doe eyes and long hair of a muted orange shade that hung in a braid. Her face was marred by scars, but instead of disfiguring her they enhanced her appearance and gave her a fearsome look. Clad in the typical furs and leathers of Skellige warriors, she looked fierce and determined to cause trouble.  
  
The hym was not pleased. It had made its lair in Udalryk’s abandoned childhood home while it sent visions to the man and goaded him into mutilating himself until he died. Cerys had come to find a way to break the curse, and the hym knew that.  
  
The creature hadn’t minded Lorelei’s presence, but Cerys was another story.  
  
Lorelei cringed back, trying to hide as well as she could. She was up in the rafters, having wrapped her tail around a wooden beam to secure herself so she wouldn’t fall off while sleeping. The beam was thick, but nowhere near enough to hide her body. Luckily Cerys hadn’t thought of looking up.  
  
Oblivious, Cerys began walking towards the end of the corridor, probably about to search the rooms one by one.  
  
If Lorelei’s memories served her right, Cerys was currently looking for a sword that she believed would lift the curse on Jarl Udalryk, thinking him haunted by his brother Aki’s ghost. She would soon find out that Udalryk was not haunted, but possessed by a hym, which was a sort of shadow creature that shared features with ghosts and demons.  
  
Lorelei remembered the events well. She’d played the Witcher 3 game over a dozen times and could easily recall most of the things that happened on that particular quest.  
  
That was why she knew she had to leave. Cerys might not notice her, but Geralt was about to show up and _he_ had enhanced senses. Even if Lorelei left, it was highly likely Geralt would be able to tell she’d been squatting the place.  
  
Lorelei eyed the roof. There was a rather large hole in it, as the building was old and decrepit, not fit for human habitation. The hole was more than big enough to escape through.  
  
She waited until Cerys was out of sight, and then unwound her tail from the wooden beam and used it like a nail, driving the sharp point into the roof. Clenching the muscles of the long appendage, she heaved herself up and out of the building.  
  
Just in time, too, because at that moment she heard a heavy **_thump_** as Cerys was hit with something hard enough to fall unconscious. The hym had struck.  
  
And barely a few seconds later, Geralt entered the building.

Lorelei’s entire body was plastered down on the roof, and her head was peeking through one of the holes in the wood, spying on the proceedings inside. The moment she noticed Geralt, she tore herself away from the gap in the roof, her heart beating so strong and fast that it was having its own little concert in her chest.  
  
And at the right moment, too, because the instant Geralt entered the building, his eyes narrowed and he sniffed at the air. Then his head _snapped_ up to where Lorelei had been a second earlier.  
  
Witcher senses were really something else.  
  
Lorelei didn’t move, staying right on the roof until her breathing calmed down. In the game, you could use Geralt’s super senses to hear monsters and animals from a distance even if they weren’t moving. She really hoped it was just a gaming mechanic, because if Geralt could do that then he’d be able to detect her even with the roof between the two of them, obscuring her from his eyes.  
  
After what seemed like an interminable wait, Lorelei heard Geralt’s footsteps moving away until he found Cerys’ unconscious body.  
  
“Shit, Cerys!” he exclaimed, his words muffled by the distance.  
  
Satisfied that the man was sufficiently distracted, Lorelei opened her wings and leapt off the roof.  
  
The longhouse was built very high up in the mountains, with the back of it facing a cliff. It was a very high drop that led straight down to the ocean, the kind that you wouldn’t survive if you were to fall.  
  
Lorelei used her wings to slow her descent and dived right into the chill waters. Her body wasn’t affected by the cold even though such temperatures would have a human in danger of hypothermia.  
  
She swam through the dark waters and then used her tail to propel herself to the surface with as much strength as she could manage. She burst out of the water and her wings caught the air, beating strongly to help her rise up in the air.  
  
There was a group of sirens flying nearby, their beautiful upper bodies at odds with their sleek, serpentine tails, the fins around their waist and the enormous leathery wings allowing them flight.  
  
Lorelei joined the group of sirens, first circling them at a distance and then approaching when they noticed her.  
  
What was a group of sirens called? Lorelei wondered. A group of fish was usually called a ‘shoal’. Though fish weren’t predatory creatures. Hm… Well, the term for a group of sharks would be more accurate, as both sharks and sirens were carnivores. Lorelei knew there were at least four or five terms for a group of sharks, but the only ones she could remember were a ‘school’, a ‘herd’ and a ‘frenzy’. Considering how excited sirens would get as soon as large prey came close, calling them a frenzy of sirens felt accurate.  
  
The monsters didn’t attack Lorelei when she joined the group. Some even came close to bump tails with Lorelei in greeting.  
  
It made sense. After all, sirens were pack animals…  
  
… and Lorelei was currently in the body of a siren.  
  
Once a boss monster named Melusine, now it was Lorelei who was inhabiting the body. She lived from day to day, feeding on the meat she could catch with the instincts and faint memories that remained from Melusine. And she was absolutely terrified of Geralt, as she suspected he’d already accepted the quest to kill the beast that had abducted and killed Nils, a villager from Svorlag. That monster was Melusine, whom had killed Nils seconds before Lorelei had taken her place. She had a witcher after her, seeking to cut her head off to present it as proof of his success to Nils’ loved ones.  
  
She was in a pretty bad situation, and even if she wanted to be involved with her favourite characters, there was no way she could do it without being killed for being a monster.


	2. Chapter 2

After eating some raw fish, Lorelei settled down in the small forest that was north of Svorlag and south-east of the abandoned longhouse she’d been squatting. Her stomach was roiling with discomfort, because even though sirens were obligate carnivores, Lorelei had been a vegetarian for years. Suddenly being forced to kill animals for survival didn’t sit right with her. At least they didn’t suffer — she usually killed the fish before they’d even realized something was wrong.  
  
There were quite a lot of wild hares in the forest, as no wolves prowled this close to a human settlement, and Lorelei was considering adding some rabbits to her diet for the sake of variety. Slimy fish might have been delicious to her siren taste buds, but her brain recoiled from eating them. Rabbits appealed to her more, though she’d have to figure out how to skin them. Maybe she could try eating one of the mountain goats instead? Those large horns they had made her a little nervous though. In the game the goats didn’t fight back and just ran, but if she tried to kill one now there was a risk it might headbutt her and manage to hurt her with those thick horns.  
  
Lorelei was currently seated on the branch of a tree, looking up at the nearby mountain where Udalryk’s longhouse was, with Cerys and Geralt inside. She couldn’t afford to live there anymore without putting herself in unnecessary risk, and she’d have to find a place to sleep for tonight.  
  
Hmmm… north of the longhouse and the mountain it stood upon, there was the sea and Lorelei’s fellow sirens. However, a little further north was a cluster of small islands, too little for humans to settle on. They weren’t large enough for a village to be built, and so they’d been left mostly alone. True, there was no shelter on those islands and Lorelei would be at the mercy of the rain if the weather decided to be disagreeable, but at least the risk of running into Geralt the monster-hunter or some random villager was low.  
  
There was one place she could sleep in that was isolated and offered protection from the rain, and that was the cave system south of the island, near the old watchtower. Unfortunately, that was Melusine’s old home and was full of human bones. Geralt would probably be there at some point to find Melusine and chop her head off, and considering Lorelei was currently in Melusine’s body… yeah, living in the caves was a bad idea. Geralt would find her there and kill her in her sleep.  
  
Lorelei sighed, leaning back against the trunk of the massive fir tree she was lounging in. She was starting to doze, eager to catch up on lost sleep. While the longhouse offered shelter from the weather, she’d spent her nights terrified of the monster haunting the building, and as a result felt constantly tired.  
  
She closed her eyes, allowing herself a bit of rest after the anxiety of seeing Geralt for the first time.  
  
And…  
  
…  
  
…  
  
…  
  
Unfortunately, seconds later a scream was heard:  
  
“AAAAAAHHHHH!”  
  
Lorelei’s eyes flew open, and she looked down. A woman was down there, holding a basket full of plants. She was a Skelliger, probably from Svorlag, and she was staring right at Lorelei.  
  
“Don’t kill me, please!” the woman shrieked. Her basket tumbled out of her grip as she raised her arms to cover her face protectively, backing away as fast as she could. She tripped over a bush and fell, left to crawl away instead.  
  
“No, no!” Lorelei exclaimed, waving her hands frantically. “I’m not going to kill you!”  
  
The villager was in hysterics, and Lorelei’s wings tensed up, ready to fly away.  
  
“I beg of you, do not—” The woman blinked, suddenly registering Lorelei’s words. “Merciful Freya, you can _speak?!”_ she asked incredulously, staring up at Lorelei.  
  
While the woman was no longer fearing for her life, she was still trembling, eyeing Lorelei cautiously.  
  
“Yes! Um, I’m sorry I surprised you,” Lorelei babbled, trying desperately to convince this woman not to run back to Svorlag and put out a kill order on Lorelei. “I won’t eat you, don’t worry. I only eat animals. I was just resting here for a bit. I’ll, uh, I’ll just leave now.”  
  
It was all incredibly awkward, and she opened her wings, deciding it was best to fly off before she said something stupid.  
  
“Wait!” the Skellige woman exclaimed. Her eyes were wide with wonder as she looked at Lorelei. “I’ve never 'eard of a siren that didn’t attack immediately. And you can talk, to boot! As good as any lass from the village. What _are_ you?”  
  
Lorelei hesitated. She couldn’t tell the whole truth, obviously, but she could explain parts of her situation. Perhaps she could say she’d been cursed into the form of a siren, and used to be a human?  
  
No, that wouldn’t work. She’d have to make up a backstory, perhaps claim she was from Temeria or Cintra, since pretending she was a Skellige woman who’d been cursed was something too easily disproved if anyone were to verify her backstory was true. This woman might even sail to whatever Skellige island Lorelei would pretend to be from to inform ‘her family’ that she’d been ‘cursed’. And if she admitted to being the victim of a curse, then the villagers of Svorlag might be kind enough to pay for a witcher to help, and Lorelei had no intention of going anywhere near Geralt. He’d see through her lies in a heartbeat.  
  
Lorelei had never been a talented liar, especially so when forced to improvise.  
  
“I’m not quite sure,” she said timidly. “I grew up smarter than the other sirens, capable of thinking like a human, and I was taught how to talk by a hermit living south of the island, who passed away a few years ago. He told me to never show myself to humans, because they wouldn’t understand and might attack me…”  
  
The woman seemed fascinated by the tale, taking a step closer without realizing it. “I didn’t know sirens could talk. I’ve heard tales from me man about ‘ow intelligent you lot were, trapping sailors or sinkin’ ships, but I didn’t think you could talk!”  
  
Lorelei shuffled in place. She wanted to bite her lip, a habit of hers for when she was anxious, but sirens had maws full of fangs and she’d just bite her lip open if she tried gnaw at it.  
  
“My name’s [ Bergthora](https://witcher.gamepedia.com/Bergthora),” the woman continued, stepping even closer to the tree Lorelei was perched in. “What’s yours?” A moment of hesitation. “Do you… _have_ a name?”  
  
Of course she had a name. The question was, should she answer this woman? Lorelei had resigned herself to staying on the outskirts of civilisation, avoiding human contact out of fear she’d be attacked. Talking to Bergthora was a risk, especially since the woman had screamed upon noticing Lorelei. Someone might have heard the scream, and it was possible warriors from Svorlag were approaching right now, intending to find out why one of their own had been screaming.  
  
She dug her nails into her palms, breathing deeply, and took a risk:  
  
“My name… It’s Lorelei. A pleasure to meet you, Bergthora.”

"Lorelei," Bergthora repeated. "What a pretty name."  
  
No longer fearful, the woman knelt down and picked up her basket, gathering the contents that had spilled out.  
  
"Thank you," said Lorelei. "I'm sorry for scaring you and making you drop your things." Her tail twitched restlessly. "Do you need help?"  
  
Bergthora chuckled. "Bah, no need for that," she said with a dismissive wave. "Just lost a few mushrooms and some herbs. I'll be done in a jiffy."  
  
Lorelei watched curiously as the woman finished gathering the basket's contents. "Are they for supper?"  
  
The woman nodded, straightening up. Some flyaways from her braid were irritating her, so she brushed all her hair back, over her shoulder.  
  
"Me man went out fishing; he promised he'd bring back a good haul. I'm picking some mushrooms t'go with our meal, since it's the season and at this moment they'll be a right delicious treat." She looked off into the distance. "This year hasn't been a kind one to us when it comes to fishing. The drowners over-bred and now there's so many that they've been snapping up all the fish. It hasn't led to a famine, thank gosh, but we've had to trade a lot of precious goods away for food. It bodes ill for the winter."  
  
Lorelei flapped her wings and flew over to Bergthora. The woman jumped a little at the sudden movement, stepping back, but soon calmed.  
  
"Have you hired a witcher to kill those drowners?" Lorelei asked.  
  
Bergthora snorted, hefting up her basket. "Whatever would we do _that_ for?"  
  
Lorelei blinked, a little surprised. Wasn't it normal to hire a witcher if you had a monster problem? Unless, of course, you lacked the monetary means, but Bergthora's village should easily be able to pay a witcher's fee if every villager gave a little money to the cause.  
  
"Well, witchers hunt monsters and drowners are monsters. So why can't you hire a witcher to kill all the drowners for you? That way there'll be enough fish in the sea again."  
  
Bergthora shook her head, exasperated. "We won't waste money on a witcher for something as trivial as drowners, lass. Drowners are a fact o' life here. We have annual cullings where we destroy all the eggs we find on beaches and we set traps for the adults to thin out their groups." She looked at Lorelei with her hands on her hips. "Who do you think we are? Mainlanders that are too spineless to deal with drowners on our own?"  
  
Oh. So it was about pride.  
  
"How are you dealing with the situation, then?" Lorelei asked.  
  
"Focusing on crops, mostly," said Bergthora. "And we've been killin' wild goats and salting their meat for winter. Our food will be less diverse than last winter, but it'll be fine as long as no one starves." She paused, looking at the forest and then at Lorelei. "Listen, I'm expected back at the village." She smiled. "I know everyone in the village will be amazed to hear I met a talkin' siren that didn't kill me on the spot! Do you think you could meet me here tomorrow as the sun rises? Then I could bring you over to meet my man and my neighbours! And I'm sure the jarl will be fascinated with this tale and'll want to meet you."  
  
Lorelei frowned. "Umm... I'm not sure that's a good idea..."  
  
"Nonsense!" exclaimed the woman, rolling her eyes. "The gods haven't been kind to our jarl lately and have demanded an awful lot of sacrifice. Your existence _must_ be a good omen for our island and everyone would want to be told."  
  
Lorelei's expression was slowly growing more worried. "Bergthora, could you please keep me a secret? I don't want anyone to know about me."  
  
The other woman blinked, taken aback.  
  
"There's a witcher on this island," Lorelei explained before the other woman could get a word in, "and I'm really, really scared of him. I'm afraid that if someone in your village knows about me, they'll think I'm a horrible monster pretending to be nice." When she noticed Bergthora was about to protest, she hurried through her explanation: "I know you think everyone in your village is trustworthy but I don't know them like you do, so could you please at least wait a few days before telling anyone about me? Just until the witcher is gone?"  
  
There weren't that many quests on the island for Geralt to complete, according to what Lorelei remembered of the game, so hopefully he'd be gone soon and wouldn't pose any danger.  
  
There was a small, short pause as Bergthora digested what she'd just heard.  
  
"... I understand," she finally said. Looking off to the side, she bit her lips nervously. "Could we still meet tomorrow morning? I would like to talk to you again."  
  
Lorelei gave a genuine smile, her eyes tearing up a little. It was embarrassing to be so affected by the thought of talking with someone, but she'd spent so many days alone in a foreign body that she found herself... _impatient_ to chat with another person.  
  
"Sure."


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning, Lorelei woke up slowly.  
  
She had always been an exceptionally heavy sleeper, and always had a tendency to sleep until lunch-time, to the consternation of others. Waking up early was difficult for her and she usually set at least ten alarms on her phone just to be sure she wouldn't fall back asleep after hearing the first one.  
  
So when she awoke that morning, it took her a while to remember she had somewhere she needed to be.  
  
"Shit!"  
  
Oh no, she had completely forgotten! She was meant to meet up with Bergthora this morning and it was nearly midday!  
  
Lorelei stretched, trying to push back the discomfort of having slept in a tree, and then launched herself in the air.  
  
Hopefully Bergthora wouldn't be too angry, if she was even still waiting.  
  
As Lorelei soared down the mountain, coniferous trees were gradually replaced by deciduous ones. The village of Svorlag was visible in the distance, a small gathering of huts and houses, all made of wood. Lorelei was too far to hear the sounds of villagers going about their day, but she could imagine it.  
  
The air was crisp and fresh, and the skies were full of menacing dark clouds. Not exactly the best weather, but in the body of a siren Lorelei found that the prospect of rain didn't annoy her as much as it would have had she still been normal. Human.  
  
It took her a dozen minutes to reach the spot where she'd met Bergthora yesterday and, to her surprise, noticed that the woman was still waiting there.  
  
It was puzzling to see that the woman hadn't left. She must have been waiting at least an hour. Lorelei was torn between being impressed at such patience and guilty for having slept in.  
  
Bergthora noticed Lorelei well before she landed. The woman took a step away from the tree she'd been leaning against and waved frantically.  
  
Lorelei frowned, circling the small clearing.  
  
The way the woman acted was at odds with her behaviour yesterday. She was waving too fast and seemed almost desperate for Lorelei to come down. It was very strange.  
  
Lorelei looked around, wondering if the explanation was that Bergthora had gone and called Geralt, who might be hiding behind a tree to ambush Lorelei as soon as she landed.  
  
No matter how hard she looked, she didn't see anyone but Bergthora. Even worse, she'd been circling the clearing for a while now and it was becoming awkward to wait so long to land.  
  
There was no choice. Lorelei would have to head down there and find out why Bergthora was acting in such a bizarre manner.  
  
She inclined her wings and swooped down like a bird of prey.  
  
The landing was a little rough, unfortunately, as Lorelei had yet to fully master that part of flight. She usually ended up sprawled on her stomach, trying to use her wings to keep her upper body upright as she landed.  
  
This time she performed a little better that she normally did, but she still winced as her tail dragged against pebbles and mud, the spike at the end digging into the ground.  
  
No monster-hunters came out to attack her, so she felt a little better knowing this was unlikely to be a trap.  
  
As Lorelei was now closer to Bergthora, she managed to see what her earlier distance had hid: Bergthora's eyes were bloodshot and had deep bags under them. Her whole face was rather pink. Either she'd been drinking or she had been crying. Lorelei was leaning towards the latter.  
  
"I'm so sorry for taking so long," said Lorelei, her guilt making her cringe and look away from the Skellige woman. "I tend to sleep a lot and I didn't have a way to wake up on time..."  
  
"It's fine," was Bergthora's response. Her voice was hoarse and wobbly.  
  
Lorelei hesitated, unsure as to what to say. "Are... Are you all right?"  
  
Bergthora's chin trembled. She opened her mouth to say something, but immediately burst into tears.  
  
A rather confused Lorelei found herself embracing a sobbing young woman, trying desperately to bring some comfort.  
  
"What's wrong?" she asked, minding her claws as she rubbed Bergthora's back comfortingly.  
  
"H-He never came back!" Bergthora exclaimed, shuddering.  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Me man!"  
  
Lorelei had no idea what this was about. However, Bergthora was clearly grief-stricken, so Lorelei hugged her tightly.  
  
"Came back from what?" she asked, voice hushed.  
  
Bergthora let go and took a step back to compose herself. "He went fishin' yesterday and never came back." She sniffed. "All 'em folk in the village are saying drowners got him, and nobody wants to go looking for me man because of the storm off the coast!" She pointed in the distance where, if one squinted, flashes of lightning would be visible among black clouds.  
  
Lorelei felt even more guilty for being late. "You didn't need to wait for me! You should be back home with friends and family instead of waiting for me here! I would've understood!"  
  
The Skellige woman shook her head, braid swinging to the side with the movement. "No, ye don't understand. Eiric is the only family I have. Our parents are dead and I have no siblings or barns." Her accent came out thicker as her emotions peaked. She took a deep, calming breath. "I was waiting for you because I need your help, Lorelei."  
  
Blinking, Lorelei pointed at herself. "Me?"  
  
Bergthora nodded. "You're a siren. You can fly and swim and... I was hoping you could go look for Eiric, save him." She swallowed. "Or at least, bring back what's left of him."  
  
Lorelei didn't even take a second to think. "Of course I'll help! I'll go looking for him, Bergthora." The name sat awkwardly on her tongue, but hopefully she hadn't mispronounced it.  
  
The Skellige woman smiled, her eyes shining with unshed tears.  
  
"Bless you, lass." She rubbed her pink nose. "He went towards Ulula's Needle, by the bay. I'll tell you where you can go looking..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next week's chapter will be three times as long as this one. It will also be the last of my pre-written content, which means updates might slow down after that.
> 
> I hope everyone had a good New Year. This is also the season for illnesses, so hugs and well-wishes to anyone who might be sick.


	4. Chapter 4

Ulula’s Needle was an easily recognizable landmark. It was an enormous standing stone that jutted out of the sea, at quite a distance from the coast. It had a vaguely ovoid shape, which was why it had been called a needle.  
  
Lorelei tended to fly on the opposite side of the island, so the only time she had seen Ulula’s Needle was on her first day as a siren, when she had flown around the island to confirm she wasn’t in the midst of a hallucination.  
  
According to Bergthora, her husband had planned on heading towards the Needle and fishing by a spot a little further out, where there were usually plenty of fish.  
  
Personally, Lorelei had no idea on how to find him. She was currently flying towards the Needle, which was rather hard to see as today’s weather consisted of a grey sky, fog everywhere, and a light drizzle. She was forced to squint to even _see_ Ulula’s Needle, which meant that if Eiric’s boat was still out there, she’d never notice it.  
  
Considering what Lorelei knew of the Witcher universe, Bergthora’s husband was probably dead and his ship was at the bottom at the sea. Were he alive, he would have already returned home. The best possible scenario was that a monster had attacked him and wounded him badly enough to prevent him from rowing back to his village. In that case, he’d be alive and Lorelei would have something to bring back to Bergthora.  
  
When Lorelei finally reached the Needle, she seated herself on the tip of the large rock for a quick break and to come up with some sort of plan.  
  
Now that she was here, the hopelessness of the task was overwhelming.  
  
This was not like playing The Witcher, where all you had to do was push a button and all the clues relevant to your quest would start glowing bright red. The only advantage Lorelei had was her ability to breathe underwater and the fact that monsters wouldn’t attack her because she looked like one of their own.  
  
This wasn’t a video game, so she needed to rely on logic.  
  
What did she know?  
  
Yesterday, Eiric had left his village by boat and headed, presumably, in a straight line towards Ulula’s Needle and had then continued past it. There had been a storm, and Eiric hadn’t come back. Either the storm had prevented him from returning, or he’d been attacked by monsters. If whatever had happened had not killed him, then spending the night out in the cold and rain had probably done him in. Lorelei would be lucky to find him before the hypothermia killed him.  
  
If Eiric was dead, then he was either at the bottom of the sea with the remains of his boat, or his boat was intact and floating somewhere with his corpse lying in it.  
  
The chances that he might be alive were slim, and every passing second raised the probability that he was dead.  
  
Now, how could Lorelei find him?  
  
She couldn’t see the village from here, so it was difficult to estimate where Eiric had passed. The only clue Lorelei had as to his location was the big rock she was perched on.  
  
Frowning, Lorelei thought about the situation and the various clues, and came to the conclusion that she would start with an aerial search, flying in circles around the Needle. She’d start with small circles and then expand the perimeter until she could barely see Ulula’s Needle anymore. And if she found nothing, then she would do the exact same thing underwater, exploring the area around the large rock to see if she could find Eiric’s corpse.  
  
Her plan set, Lorelei left her spot on Ulula’s Needle and began her search.  
  
  
  
  


-x-x-x-

  
  
  
  
  
Three hours later, Lorelei was a mix of discouraged and annoyed.  
  
She had searched the entire area by air, and half-way through her search the skies had lightened up, allowing sunlight through. The increased visibility and the lessening fog had at first served to bolster her mood, until she had realized that being able to see better just meant it was easier to see how badly her search was going.  
  
The sea looked the same no matter where she flew, and without Ulula’s Needle she would have gotten lost early on. Worse, she found absolutely nothing. Not even floating planks of wood to helpfully signal where Eiric’s boat might have been destroyed, if that was indeed the case.  
  
When she finally became fed up with the lack of results, she started searching underwater, and that was both better and worse.  
  
Better, because there were plenty of shipwrecks, and worse, _because there were plenty of shipwrecks._  
  
Lorelei could not count how many times she had found the wreck of a fishing ship and thought it was the object of her search, before realizing she had found the wrong boat.  
  
The bottom of the sea was a true graveyard, with ships of all sizes and conditions, and she had even found a few skeletons, which had made her panic and swim away.  
  
It didn’t help that Lorelei was utterly incapable of telling the difference between a boat that had been underwater for one night or for weeks. Sure, some looked more decomposed than others, but Lorelei just couldn’t tell them apart!  
  
She had spent twice the amount of time searching underwater than she had spent searching in the air, but she couldn’t find Eiric’s remains. There were just too many corpses and shipwrecks, and while she was pretty confident that he was in there somewhere, she just couldn’t locate him.  
  
Geralt would have found the corpse ages ago, but Lorelei was no witcher and couldn’t seem to finish her quest as easily as the ones she had done on her PS4, from the safety of her home.  
  
And so, after three hours out searching in the cold, Lorelei gave up.  
  
“This is too hard,” she said, leaning against Ulula’s Needle and looking around as if Eiric would appear out of nowhere for her convenience.  
  
Technically the best course of action now was to return to Bergthora and tell her that the search had been a failure, but Lorelei was a little too anxious to tell a distraught woman that her husband’s corpse hadn’t been found. Who knew how Bergthora would react? Maybe she would start crying, or she’d get angry at Lorelei for failing to find Eiric and would hire Geralt to find the man instead and then Geralt would figure out that Lorelei had been sniffing around and then he’d kill her because he was a witcher and she was a monster and then she’d be _dead_ just because she was too incompetent for a damn search quest—  
  
Lorelei took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down.  
  
Panicking over nightmare scenarios would not do any good. Her fears were irrational, and she knew that Bergthora would be kind if grieving, and that even if Geralt was there he wouldn’t kill her because she was innocent, but she couldn’t help remembering the playthroughs where she had killed peaceful monsters because she needed ingredients for her potions, and it was entirely possible that Geralt was the same kind of man as the one Lorelei had played in those particular playthroughs.  
  
So yes, she had every intention of avoiding Geralt for the rest of her life if only to avoid the slim chance that she might be killed.  
  
And as for Bergthora, Lorelei should really tell her that she hadn’t found Eiric, but honestly? She didn’t really have the courage.  
  
It wasn’t like a few minutes would make a difference, anyway. Lorelei could go take a break before heading over to break the news, and Bergthora wouldn’t notice a thing. It would give Lorelei the time to come up with the right words to say.  
  
But first, Lorelei needed to leave Ulula’s Needle. It wasn’t a particularly comfortable spot for a break.  
  
She looked around until she found the closest spot of land, and then she flew towards it.  
  
Spikeroog, the island where Lorelei and Bergthora lived, had a shape that reminded Lorelei of a bird of prey’s head while it was opening its beak wide, seen from the side. It even had a small lake that, from above, looked like the metaphorical bird’s eye. The village of Hov was set by the tip of the upper mandible, while Svorlag, Bergthora’s village, was around the lower mandible, close to the spot where both the upper and lower parts were in contact.  
  
The entire area between the two mandibles formed a nice bay, and it was where Eiric had sailed through. Ulula’s Needle was by the tip of the bird’s beak, close to the lower mandible.  
  
That meant that the closest bit of land was a sparsely forested area by the tip of the lower mandible, and it was exactly where Lorelei was heading to take a break. Said forested area was pretty devoid of people, and from what she remembered of the game, no quests had taken place right there. It should be danger-free.  
  
Her wings trembled a little as she flew, unused to so many hours of effort, but she ignored her exhaustion by thinking of the little nap she’d take as soon as she reached land.  
  
When she did arrive by the muddy beach, she was amused to notice a little boat there, the kind that were found everywhere in the Witcher game for the player to use and sail around in. For a second, she wondered if this could possibly be Eiric’s boat, and maybe he’d managed to sail to safety while she was looking for him, and that right now he might be heading home to his wife.  
  
Or maybe he’d been gravely wounded by a monster, and was lying somewhere, having failed to return to his village before bleeding out.  
  
Lorelei was pretty sure the boat belonged to a random Skelliger, but the slim chance that this might be the boat she was looking for had her forgetting her exhaustion.  
  
She swooped down to hover close to the boat, examining the ground critically. With the rain, which had stopped an hour into her search, the ground was quite muddy. If someone had been near this boat at any point this morning, their footprints would be visible. Unfortunately, no matter how hard Lorelei squinted, there were no traces in the ground.  
  
That meant that if this was indeed Eiric’s boat, then he had left it here either during the night or yesterday evening, while the storm was at its most fierce. That meant that he would’ve had the time to return to Svorlag and to his wife well before Bergthora had gone to ask Lorelei for help. The fact that he hadn’t returned to his wife meant that he hadn’t been able to, probably due to a wound. Perhaps he was lying wounded somewhere in the forest, unable to move, or his corpse was. Then again, if this wasn’t even Eiric’s boat, then she wouldn’t find him no matter how hard she searched.  
  
Frustratingly, the small boat looked completely common, identical to all those boats Geralt could use in the game to move around. It didn’t have a ‘Property of Eiric’ carved into its side for Lorelei to see. Not that such a thing would have been useful anyway, seeing as she couldn’t read the local script.  
  
Lorelei sighed, and gently lowered herself into the mud next to the boat.  
  
She was going to give her search one last chance and look around the forest for Eiric. If she didn’t find him, or just found out the boat belonged to someone else, then she’d head back to Bergthora and tell her the bad news.  
  
Honestly, she really hoped she found Eiric, if only to have something useful to say to poor Bergthora. Lorelei would rather tell Bergthora that she had found Eiric’s corpse than offer false hope by saying she hadn’t found anything.  
  


  
  
-x-x-x-  
  
  
  


The area had rather rocky soil, so that meant that the forest was sparse, the kind one wouldn’t be able to hide in. That meant that moment Lorelei flew up to have a higher vantage point, she saw that the only place anyone could be was a lone house a bit further inland, with several gutted rabbits hanging from a cord near the front door. The rest of the forest was empty of people, and she would have noticed if Eiric was anywhere because the few trees present were too thin to hide a fully-grown man. Whoever lived in the house she had seen was probably the owner of the boat.  
  
She shifted her body and dove, trying to be as silent as possible as she approached. Unfortunately, it was not really possible. Her wings were shaped like a bat’s, and although they were large enough that she did not need to flap them as often as a bat did to stay in the air, they were still rather noisy. They did not really have the shape of an owl’s wings, made to be near-silent when hunting prey.  
  
Uh, not that Lorelei was hunting prey. She was just hunting a person. With no intent to kill him.  
  
So anyway, the house was pretty much a small shack, the kind a person with modern sensibilities would claim was too small to house anyone, while a commoner from the Middle Ages would say it was perfectly capable of housing a family of three or four people.  
  
Now if this had been the Witcher video game, she would have peeked through the window to see if anyone was inside. Unfortunately, this was real life, and in the Middle Ages peasants did not just have square-shaped holes in their walls to serve as windows like The Witcher 3 would have you believe. Lorelei guessed that glass was either not invented yet or too expensive, and so based on her observations, what the common people did instead was stretch animal hides over wooden frames. The hides were scrapped until they were thin enough to let light in while preventing the wind from passing through. It meant it was impossible to look through a window, but considering the lack of glass, that was probably a good price to pay for the sake of letting sunlight in.  
  
Lorelei had never thought of windows while playing the Witcher game, but it made sense to have something to stop even the slightest breeze. Considering it was the Middle Ages, most houses were really cold, and it was a bad idea to make it even worse by having the kind of windows you saw in the game.  
  
Anyway, the point was, there was no way for her to just look through the window and check if the man she was looking for had taken refuge in there. Something else had to be done instead.  
  
She landed in front of the house’s door, and she had _no_ excuse for what she did next.  
  
It must have been a habit from playing video games where you could just enter random people’s houses whenever you wanted and her knowing she lived in such a video game must’ve somehow made her momentarily stupid, because she immediately opened the front door and peeked inside.  
  
The door was not locked, because this was the Middle Ages and people lived in small communities where they trusted each other enough to not lock their doors, so the wooden door swung open with no resistance.  
  
Just as she had suspected, the place was tiny. It was essentially one room with a large bed in the corner and a small fireplace with cooking ware by the other side. Her eyes focused on the bed, where a couple was sleeping peacefully.  
  
That was, until the door she had pushed open slammed into the wall, making a sound loud enough to wake the woman in the bed.  
  
The Skellige woman startled, sitting up to evaluate the situation, and shrieked when she caught sight of the siren just outside the front door. All the noise woke the man, who jolted and fell out of the bed, dragging the covers down with him.  
  
Lorelei reared back, trying to stare anywhere _but_ at the naked couple while feeling extremely guilty.  
  
She had just broken into someone’s home for no reason! Worse, she did not even have an excuse; the tiredness from search for three hours must have had an effect on her cognition. And now her thoughtlessness had terrified an innocent Skellige couple who were just minding their own business, living their own lives.  
  
Lorelei was such a terrible person—  
  
“Eiric, there’s a monster!” the Skellige woman cried.  
  
  
  
  
Wait, what?  
  
  
  
  
“Get behind me!” exclaimed an unclothed Eiric, while pushing an equally naked woman behind him who was definitively _not_ his wife.  
  
Lorelei blinked, her mind moving slowly as it analysed what she was seeing.  
  
Eiric grabbed the nearest thing—a broom—and held it threateningly like a sword.  
  
As for Lorelei? Well, if this were a quest in the Witcher game, Geralt would be interrogating the two people to find out exactly what was going on. But Lorelei had been searching for three hours in the cold and her patience had run out long ago.  
  
“Leave, ya foul devil!” shouted Eiric, spittle coming out of his mouth. He brought his arm around to hit Lorelei with the broom.  
  
Having gone from confused to straight up annoyed, Lorelei wound her tail tightly around Eiric’s body and with a flap of her wings, she flew off, yanking him violently along. The man was screaming obscenities and trying to hit her with the broom but she ignored him, focusing on bringing him back to his wife.  
  
Bergthora would be the one to deal with this situation, because Lorelei had officially no more fucks to give.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have now posted all pre-written content, which means that updates will slow down. As I am currently in the middle of university exams, I cannot promise a fast update, but I'll do my best.
> 
> What you can do to help is leave kudos and comments. I am more motivated to write if I know a lot of people are waiting for more and I'm not just writing for myself. I'm not one of those writers who get angry at people asking 'update please', instead I find it very flattering and motivating.
> 
> So don't hesitate to tell me what you liked, and what you hope to see in future chapters.
> 
> See you soon!


	5. Chapter 5

When Lorelei flew back to the sparsely forested clearing where she’d met a teary-eyed Bergthora earlier in the morning, no one was there. Of course not. That would have been too easy.

Lorelei had been searching for Bergthora’s husband for hours, and the weather wasn’t exactly great. Bergthora wouldn’t have waited around for most of the day, doing nothing. She had probably returned home long ago.

That left Lorelei with a problem. She had an unfaithful husband held in her grasp — held by her long tail, to be accurate — and no one to give him to.

Lorelei had strong opinions about cheating. For her, it was a deep and wounding betrayal, especially if you were married and not simply in an ordinary relationship not yet tied by holy matrimony.

She was a romantic, and simply couldn’t understand the logic of cheating. If you were unsatisfied in your relationship, then you had to break up first before approaching another person!

Bergthora had been crying, convinced her husband was dead. Meanwhile, the man had been busy railing another woman, uncaring of how worried his wife and other villagers he knew might have been.

“Release me, you foul abomination! Immediately.”

Speaking of the man, Eiric hadn’t shut his mouth during the whole flight. He’d spent his time cursing her out and trying to scratch at the tail holding his calves.

She didn’t know what he expected. If he managed to make her release him, did he realize that from this height, the fall would break quite a few bones?

But the most immediate problem was what to do with him. Lorelei refused to let him go and allow him to run away before he could be confronted by his wife. At the same time, Bergthora was most likely back at her village, where Lorelei did not want to be. Other villagers would think her an ordinary siren and try to attack her because they’d believe her to be dangerous.

Then again, the day was cloudy and full of mist, and the guards in the village tended to be armed with axes, spears or sword, with few or no long-range weapons to be seen.

If Lorelei stayed out of reach when she dropped off Eiric, and used the mist as camouflage, surely things would be fine? She’d be quick.

“Rgahhh!”

Eiric was using his abdominal muscles to pull his upper body up so he could reach Lorelei’s tail. Annoyed, Lorelei shook him a bit and he lost his concentration, falling down so that he was dangling upside-down once more.

Her disgust at his unfaithfulness was renewed with a round of irritation, and she decided to risk a trip to the village if it meant punishing him.

She put extra strength in her wing to fly higher, the motion causing a burst of displaced air. Then, she dived.

“Ahh!” Eiric shouted as Lorelei left her body in free-fall, slowly opening her wings until she was gliding.

They moved swiftly. At first, Eiric continued shouting obscenities and trying to dislodge her tail. But when the village came into view between blankets of fog, that was when he became worried.

“What? No, not that way! Blasted beast, don’t you—”

Lorelei didn’t listen, single-mindedly focused on the village ahead.

The village wasn’t completely flat. It was built by the beach, on a gently sloped surface. There were several boats down by the beach with Skellige men coming back from a day of fishing. The buildings higher up on the slope were clearly those serving as homes, and Lorelei could see one of the biggest homes, separated from the rest of the village by a one-minute walk. That was the home of the local jarl, Udalryk.

She was nearly directly above the village now and people beneath had noticed her despite her best efforts to be silent. The racket Eiric was making made any attempt at stealth impossible.

Lorelei shook the man in her grip again, but it was too late. She could hear gasps from villagers beneath, and some guards further away had seen her.

Since most of the guards were closer to the beach, Lorelei flew further up, in the more residential area. She couldn’t find Bergthora and she knew she didn’t have much time before someone tried to attack her, so she swooped down.

Lorelei aimed for an open area that served as some sort of central square where a lot of pedestrians were walking. As she arrived near the ground, she released Eiric and flew back up.

Many villagers gasped. One or two even toppled over in their haste to move out of the way of what they believed to be a rampaging siren.

Lorelei went on to land on one of the nearby roofs, settling on the side that faced away from the central square and peeking up over the highest point of the roof to see how people were reacting.

Some of the children were being herded by their mothers into homes, the doors slammed shut behind them. Various villagers were bringing out weaponry, some of it improvised like a broom or a stick from a fence because they hadn’t been armed when Lorelei had arrived.

Nobody was paying attention to Eiric, who was slowly rising to his feet, head hunched into his shoulders. He was in his underwear and highly visible, but people weren’t looking at him. No, instead they were all focused on Lorelei, the one considered the biggest priority.

That wouldn’t do.

“I brought back Eiric!” she shouted loudly.

Silence. Some of the villagers were sharing glances. One even elbowed his neighbour, pointing at Eiric with wide eyes. Others were surprised at the fact that a siren could talk.

They still held their weapons up.

“Bergthora told me her husband had gone missing and asked me to find him for her!” Lorelei continued. “I searched for him for hours, and finally found him in a lone hut, in bed with another woman!”

 _That_ garnered a reaction. A lot of the villagers seemed less wary now in favour of stepping away from Eiric, giving him disdainful glances.

“That’s a lie! I nevah did anything of the sor’!” protested Eiric. It didn’t help his case that he wasn’t fully dressed and looked like he’d recently gone through intimate activities. The man realized it, too, because he changed tactics and pointed at Lorelei. “That’s a siren! She took me while I was fishing, she did! She’s the one responsible for mah disappearance!”

Lorelei narrowed her eyes, wishing she was more surprised that he’d try to paint himself as the victim when he had been caught in the act, as it were.

Thankfully, Lorelei didn’t even need to answer, because at that moment Bergthora showed up.

“Eiric?!” The woman was pushing past gawking villagers, hurrying to her husband’s side.

Lorelei didn’t know if the woman had heard her previous words about how Eiric had been found, and she wasn’t looking forward to repeating herself and watching the heartbreak in person.

“Honey!” Eiric exclaimed back, opening his arms. “This monster just lied and tried to—”

Bergthora slapped him.

There was a sudden silence all around while Eiric clasped his cheek, shocked.

“How dare you?” demanded Bergthora, furious. “Lorelei is a just and kindly siren sent by the gods themselves. I begged her to find you so that I might at least have a corpse to bury if yeh were dead! Merciful Lorelei agreed to this task, only to bring me back a man who had turned his back on me?! On the vow we made before the gods?!”

She slapped him again.

One of the village guards had completely forgotten about his weapon and was instead trying to hide his grin.

A lot of the surrounding people had lowered their weapons and were now watching the argument as if it were the most entertaining thing they’d seen in years.

“Bergthora, that siren’s lying—” protested Eiric.

“Silence!” She glared at him. “Right now, I trust her much more than I do you!” Looking him over, her glare deepened. She leaned in and took a deep sniff. “I can smell it on you. Who was it, Eiric? One of the neighbours? Or did you find yourself some lass from the other side of the isle?”

By now, Lorelei was largely satisfied. She knew that the important information had been passed on and that Bergthora could handle the rest.

With the situation dealt with, Lorelei would now have to leave before the villagers and guards remembered her existence. She did not wish to wait and find out how many were armed with bows.

Lorelei opened her wings and turned around, using her tail to rise higher so she’d have more distance from the roof to flap her wings.

“Lorelei, wait!”

It was Bergthora.

Lorelei turned to look, and saw that Bergthora was holding a hand out beseechingly, and that her cry had reminded everyone of the siren up on a roof. Thankfully, very few people raised their weapons this time.

“I’m sorry if things didn’t go as you expected,” said Lorelei.

Bergthora shook her head. “I thought ‘im dead. A live man is always better than a dead one, even if I discovered such upsettin’ news. At least alive, he’ll be able to make amends for the vows he broke.”

Eiric opened his mouth to protest his innocence again but Bergthora snapped at him. He subsided.

She turned back to Lorelei.

“I shall explain who you are to the others,” she promised. “If it ain’t too much trouble, could you come back this evenin’? I’ll prepare a hearty meal for yeh, and have you meet the neighbours. I’m sure our jarl will want to thank yeh for returnin’ one of our own.”

She gave a sharp glance at the people around her, daring them to contradict her.

A few days ago, Lorelei would have said no. The fear of being hunted down because she was a siren was a reasonable one, and she wasn’t sure how far she could trust people. But Bergthora was kind, and Lorelei was beginning to feel the loneliness of her new existence of a siren.

She wanted to talk to people again.

So instead of saying no, what Lorelei said was:

“I’ll see what I can do.”


End file.
